Man gets life in prison for killing woman at homeless camp in Irwindale

POMONA — An ex-convict was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a deadly attack with a pickaxe and a rock on a woman at a homeless encampment in the riverbed of the San Gabriel River in Irwindale.

Jurors deliberated less than an hour before finding Steve Carlos Williams, 48, of Duarte, guilty Sept. 5 of first-degree murder, first-degree residential burglary and assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury in connection with the Feb. 20, 2021, killing of Heather Marvets Kauffman, 37, according to Deputy District Attorney Phil Stirling.

The jury also found true the special circumstance allegation of murder while lying in wait, along with allegations that he personally used a pickaxe and a rock during the commission of the crime.

Williams — who testified in his own defense and denied being involved in the killing — said during an undercover jailhouse operation that he believed the woman might eventually cooperate with law enforcement involving an unrelated crime, Stirling said.

The defendant was also convicted of two counts of resisting an officer in connection with his Feb. 23, 2021, arrest.

Williams was sentenced in April 2022 in a separate case to three years in state prison on two counts of robbery stemming from a Feb. 3, 2021, run-in with an employee at Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles in Pasadena, according to the prosecutor.

Williams refused to adhere to the restaurant’s face covering requirement as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and pulled out a gun, demanded a bag of food items and took several other food orders that were waiting to be picked up by other customers, authorities said soon after the robbery.

The criminal complaint on the robbery case alleged that he had prior convictions for burglary, unlawful driving or taking of a vehicle, drug offenses, a weapon offense and grand theft.